ANIMATION CONVENTIONS

This section is more for Drew to remind himself of how to do things properly so there's no stupid rework like he's had to do a number of times. You'd think he'd learn from his mistakes… but he hasn't. Until Now.

1) Start with the Idle animation. The neutral pose you chose will be the starting point for all other animations. Because the character must shift from a neutral pose to a run or attack animation most of the time, if there is a discrepancy, the animation smoothing will look jumpy.
2) Do the walk / run animations 2nd. This is so that moves such as the dash attack will be easier to start if you know what the character looks like in mid walk/run
3) THEN do the moves.

Derp.

Naming Conventions

This is a list of all the naming conventions used by the engine. Take note all names are case and whitespace sensitive

Movement

Idle - Character standing still : No movement
Idle2 - After standing still, character does a secondary idle
Crouch - Caracter is crouching

Walk - Character moving across stage
Run - Character running
Roll - Character rolls on the ground
Halt - Character turns around slowly from a committed run after halting their momentum.

Grab - Character attempts to grab an opponent
Grabbed - Character in a pose of being grabbed
Hit - Character gets hit
Crhit - Character gets hit while crouching

GetUp - Character returning to a standing position from the knock down state

Jump- Character is jumping
Fall - Character is falling
Tumble - Character is in stun recovery while moving through the air; typically launched by an attacl
SentFlying - Character hit so hard they are sent fying (arms and legs out, back/ass back)

Land - Character landing on ground out of a jump
Tbland - Character landing on the ground after a tumble
Slam - Character hitting the ground or wall from a "Sent Flying" state
WallSlam - Character hitting the wall from a "Sent Flying" state - chains into Tumble
AtkLand - Character lands on the ground from the air DURING an arial attack. This landing is longer than a normal land and needs only be 2-3 poses for optimal animation time changing.

LedgeGrab - Character gabs a valid ledge of land.
LedgeClimb - Character is hoisting him/herself over a ledge to return to the stage
LedgeRoll - Character hoists him/herself over the ledge into a tumble
LedgeJump- Character jumps from a ledgehang loop
LedgeHang - the loop that plays while the character hangs from the ledge in a vulnerable state.
LedgeAttack - the character attacks the area close to the ledge while getting up (slower than the ledgeClimb animation)

AirDodge - Character dodging in the air
SpotDodge - Character is dodging in place

How to export animations from blender into the editor.

So, here's a quick tutorial on how to export animations yourself.

Select the armature and open up the NLA editor. ( Dr00's notes: Yeah this means select the rigging in 3d view)

Open up the dopesheet in a separate panel. Select the action editor in the dopesheet

In the Action Editor, you can select any of the animations in the drop down panel as shown. Select the animation you want to add.

4. The animation should appear in your NLA editor. Hit the snowflake by the animation and a yellow bar should appear under NLAtrack.
5. Select another animation and you should see the same thing happen. Click the snowflake and the bar will appear on a separate track.
6. Keep stacking the animations on this same track. Don't let them touch or overlap. When exported, the .mesh/.skeleton should include the animations.

Additional things to check

Framerate

The default framerate is 24 fps, and we want a framerate of 30 fps. To do that go to properties, then to the render icon (looks like a camera) to the right of where you selected properties. Drag the pane down and the option to set the framerate is located there. It should look something like this: